Syllabi
On this page, you will find sample course syllabi (with suggested readings, assessments, and schedules), as well as sample annotated PowerPoint slides and notes to complement the syllabi.
A Crash Course in Managing Ethics
This is a short, two- to three-day module intended to be inserted into an existing related class which needs an ethics component, or to be used as the basis for a short program or crash-course for executives.
Managing Flawed People
Why do good people so often do bad things? Why do so many well-meaning organizations not only fail to achieve their goals, but sometimes undermine them? How often do people lie and cheat? What really drives people and what makes people tick? Around the world, how do different cultures affect people’s behavior? How can we use the answers to these questions to better manage ourselves and others, and to help ensure we succeed in our ends? How good should people even be? How much of our seemingly moral behavior turns out to be motivated by status-seeking?
This seminar is a crash course on moral and social psychology, experimental economics, the economics of organizations, and the economics of collective action. Students will learn strategies for bringing out the best in themselves and others and reducing the harms our worst aspects can cause. All students will be asked to complete a major experiential project that will require them to confront—and overcome—these problems first-hand.
Business-Government Relations
This course is meant to provide a realistic account of how businesses and governments interact in the US and around the world. Consider this class a crash course in the most important tools from political science, political psychology, economics, and political economy, on what are, from a business perspective, the most important issues in voter behavior, lobbying, regulation, international trade, comparative politics and comparative political economy, public goods, coordination and collective action problems, bureaucratic behavior, politician behavior, market and government failure, and more.
The goal is to help you— as future business workers and possibly as future business leaders—understand and predict the environment you will work within, with all its possibilities and dangers. The course is designed to prepare you for the time when you, as a senior manager of a business firm, will find your business activities being partly determined by government policies.
Data Ethics and Privacy
This course aims to develop an understanding of the technical, legal, and philosophical problems of data ethics and privacy today. The ultimate purpose of this course is to enable students to make informed judgments about how best to address these challenges both within their own professional domain and as contributors to our broader public discourse.
Business and the Global Environment
This course explores the ethical dimensions of business, with a specific focus on understanding our ethical obligations in light of business’s impact on the environment. In the first part of the class, we will ask what the fundamental principles are underlying good business practice, and further examine why normal people do bad things. In the second part, we will turn to environmental questions, and ask what sorts of things have value. Does the realm of moral consideration extend past human beings to include animals, plants, and nature itself? How does environmental concern figure into the worthwhile life? What role do consumer goods play in a good life? How would we know? Good intentions are not enough to make good policy. Thus, in the third part of the course, we will investigate to some degree what sorts of policies actually help protect the environment. We will learn what economics and other social sciences tell us about human behavior and how to shape institutions.
Ethical Values of Business and the Moral Limits of Markets
This course explores the ethical dimensions of business. We will look at some possible answers to the following questions:
What are the moral foundations of our market system? Why have private property, a price system, and market organization rather than the alternatives?
What kind of responsibilities do corporate managers have?
Why do good people do bad things?
What motivates most people? Are most people selfish and greedy?
As a business leader, how can I use the answers to question 3 and 4 to improve my own behavior, and that of my employees?
What are the moral limits of markets? Are there some things that should not be bought or sold? Why are some markets considered “repugnant”?
Our course will pay particular attention to question 6, especially markets in blood plasma and kidneys, but also bone marrow, and, to some extent, commercial surrogacy. We will have an opportunity to return to these questions throughout the course.
Ethical Leadership: Organizations and Behavior
This course focuses on the value and meaning of ethical leadership within organizations. This requires understanding challenges of collective action that arise within firms, and we will examine specific problems related to corporate governance, gaming of the law, insider trading, whistleblowing, conflicts of interest, motivation and the design of compensation, behavioral strategy, and non-market strategy (lobbying, rent seeking, and regulation). Ultimately, we aim to understand the unique role that ethical leadership can play in preventing and remedying corporate harms and to equip you with conceptual tools that will enable you to recognize and address ethical liabilities in whatever professional environment you find yourself.
Ethical Leadership: Values and Norms
These particular sets of slides, exercises, and activities focus on introducing the basic normative issues that arise in business. They can be combined with the slides from a Crash Course in Business Ethics, which focus on the basics of the psychological and economic principles which explain why people act badly.
Business: Politics, Regulation, and Corporate Governance
This course explores the ethical dimensions of business, with a specific focus on challenges of governance. The first third of the course examines theories of political economy, with a focus on collective action problems and potential solutions to them. Next, we turn to case studies of prominent organizational and regulatory failures. We conclude with discussion of contemporary policy debates, asking how a variety of formal and informal mechanisms and commitments might improve the conduct of businesses and business people.